Pelosi: Congress misled by CIA

Battle over interrogations heating up

May 15, 2009|By Greg Miller, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused the Bush administration and the CIA of misleading Congress about waterboarding prisoners, escalating a political fight with Republicans over her knowledge of the treatment of detainees.

Separately, the CIA rejected a request from former Vice President Dick Cheney to declassify memos that Cheney has said show the agency's harsh interrogation methods were crucial to getting information from detainees that helped disrupt possible terror plots.

The two developments underscore how the classified details of the CIA's interrogation operations are fueling political skirmishes months after the program was shut down by President Barack Obama.

In her most detailed account to date, Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she was told during a classified briefing in September 2002 that the CIA was not engaged in waterboarding, even though records now indicate that the agency had used the technique dozens of times on a suspect one month earlier.

"The CIA was misleading the Congress" as part of a broader Bush administration pattern of deception about its activities, Pelosi said. "The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed," she said, adding, "we now know that earlier, they were." Pelosi's comments amount to an allegation that the CIA violated its legal obligation to keep congressional leaders accurately informed.

Republicans responded by ratcheting up their criticism of Pelosi.

"I think the problem is that the speaker has had way too many stories on this issue," said House GOP leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

He said that given the briefings provided to Pelosi and other Democrats, their recent criticism, following their initial silence, is an attempt "to have it both ways." "It's pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were," he said.

The controversy has become a sideshow to the broader debate over interrogation methods Obama has banned -- a decision Cheney and others say makes the U.S. less safe.

Republicans have focused in particular on Pelosi, accusing her of hypocrisy for failing to try to stop the interrogation practices until well after she learned about them in detail.

Pelosi said no protest would have mattered to Bush administration officials.

The criticism of Pelosi gained traction last week when the CIA released a table that showed she and former Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who were then the top members of the House Intelligence Committee, were the first lawmakers to be told of the agency's interrogation program.

The table said both members attended a briefing in September 2002 during which the CIA described the particular interrogation techniques "that had been employed." In August of that year, records now show, the CIA used the waterboarding technique on Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times.

The table did not indicate whether waterboarding was specifically mentioned in 2002, but showed that a senior aide to Pelosi attended a 2003 briefing where the technique, in which a prisoner believes he or she is in imminent danger of drowning, was discussed.